


Who am i?

by Valderas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asylum, Daddy Issues, Mental Illness, Mommy Issues, Smoke and Shadow, The Search, finding happiness, fuck the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valderas/pseuds/Valderas
Summary: My own version of The Search and Smoke and Shadow. Azula's perspective on life after the war for her and learning how to exist for herself.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Who am i?

**Author's Note:**

> this is kinda a prequel- im still working on the next few chapters but i kinda liked this scene as a stand-alone!

Azula the hungry. Azula the cruel. Azula the rightful heir.

Words that sat beside her pride and followed her throughout life and then finally to the grave. She wasn't dead yet but her brother had buried her here. Here in this hell where her fire dimmed till it was dark everywhere she went. She wasn't allowed to bend, then she wasn't allowed to walk, then she couldn't have nice things, and then eventually the room she resided in was bare. 

Mai had visited her once. Never again. Zuko stopped barging in months ago. Ty lee followed soon after. It truly was like dying. 

Life at the asylum became a game to win as soon after she realized that she was losing. She could do it. She could play nice and have nice things again easily. She could win at therapy and befriend every buffoon in this nuthouse. Azula was convinced of these thing if only her mother would just fuck off. Her mother would stare at her across the room and find something- anything she did and relaunch into the plot of ruining Azula’s life. Mother could do things and say things to people and turn them against her in seconds. The only problem was that nobody could see it. Even when Mother was whispering to the nurses no one believed it. Incident after incident of yelling, screaming, and burning room after room to the ground she finally gave up. 

There came a point where she had to accept hopelessness if there was ever going to be a chance at regaining her status. She had to rework in her head what good behavior here meant. Good at home meant extreme displays of power and strength. She had grown accustomed to praise after putting someone in their place beneath her. Here it was the complete opposite. She noted that the ones who could disappear were the ones deemed sane. Being sane was good behavior. Azula was set on achieving sanity. For the next couple of months she didn't speak unless questioned, her responses short and often filled with lies. If she didn't like her food she just didn't eat no matter how long she’d gone between meals. During the day she hid away in her room as to avoid being seen doing anything “insane”.

Azula, darling, you should really try to get better. 

The soft spoken words rattled in her brain. The image of her mother just out of the corner of her eye. Despite her presence being the only warmth in the dull grey room she didnt react. Her mother’s lips twisted into a frown. Disappointed again. 

I do really hate to see you like this.

This forced Azula’s pale thin face into a scowl. She glared at her mother. No. No she was not her mother. Ursa was the mother of her downfall, the creator of all of her failures. Not her own. Ursa, the woman who loved her least, who ignored her desperate clawing for affirmation. No matter how much she did right it was Ursa who whispered into the ears of everyone she knew and drove them away. Made them leave just like Ursa had. 

“You always hated to see me.”

“Azula..?” an irritatingly familiar voice broke through the room, shattering her train of thought. For a moment she didn't react. Perhaps it was just another trick created by Ursa to make her look foolish again. Perhaps her brother was really in the room. Who knows! She was stuck facing the other direction. “Uhm.. So-”

“Zuzu I recall telling you to never come back here.” She cut him off. Her voice was patronizingly higher when speaking to him, she always had to be above him in some way.

“Yes but..” Zuko paused. It was once customary for Azula to interrupt him. He’d start to say anything at all and she’d cut him off, sometimes to steal his words or just silence him. It used to be such a fun joke and it had become so normal, so anticipated, that he had started doing it for her. This time she was quiet. In the silence she could hear him readjusting his posture. Little brother, always so easily unnerved. 

“Well?”

“Well.. I’m here because i want to bring you home.”


End file.
